


The White Palace

by Schnikeys_Discuss (Schnikeys)



Series: Clockie's Meta [26]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Analysis, Archived from radioactivesupersonic Blog, Character Analysis, Gen, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schnikeys/pseuds/Schnikeys_Discuss
Summary: "Honestly, though, actually digesting / seeing through the high of “I can’t believe I cleared the White Palace” so much of the Palace’s design and obstacles are major influences for how I read the Pale King."
Series: Clockie's Meta [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974223
Kudos: 9





	The White Palace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClockworkRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/gifts).



Honestly, though, actually digesting / seeing through the high of “I can’t believe I cleared the White Palace” so much of the Palace’s design and obstacles are major influences for how I read the Pale King.

At first glance, it’s beautiful. The size, the glowing “birds” that fly away from you- it’s got so many plants it’s nearly a garden more than a castle. The vast interiors, the clouds. Even for how nerve-wracking the platforming is there’s a chilly serenity that never fades.

Then there’s something alien about it. Even with the Crystal Peak’s machines, the devices all have this fantasy quality to them. The Palace has its infamous buzzsaws, which are nearly jarring in the setting- they’re so modern and clean. There’s something operating-room sterile about the place. The furniture is all covered with sheets. It’s grand and empty and beautiful and outside of the hidden chambers, there’s a keen sense that nobody actually _lives_ there. What _are_ those bird things? They’re not maskflies or aluba. They seem made of pure light. Are they constructs, like the Wingmoulds and Kingsmoulds? The retainers who never speak to you, but all keep their voices down, and don’t react if you murder their peers in front of them- they don’t even leave bodies behind, but melt away into essence, suggesting they’re not even real- constructs of the dream. (The Seer also dissolves into essence, but, it’s more dramatic, and she’s not in a dream world- and she reacts to what you’re doing. The retainers don’t.)

And then, there’s also this sense of bleakness, of punishment, of restraint. That the only rooms that, again, feel _inhabited_ are both hidden, and one is set up as an immaculate shrine to the White Lady, to the Pure Vessel- just that nursery with its single chair and cradle and it just feels so sad, like the implication that long after he isolated himself from everyone, the Pale King was setting things out for his family, however privately, like they were just going to come back. Even when it was his own hand that arguably destroyed that family- he seems to have been the one who left the White Lady behind, and the Pure Vessel was _definitely_ his idea, but his dreamscape is the one hanging onto that nursery room. It may have been part of the original Palace, but, that it persists in the dream when, again, the whole place feels so empty, when there’s not even a chair for him in that room.

And then the areas associated with the King himself are dark, nearly claustrophobic, and barren. The throne you find him on is, I believe, the only chair you can sit on in the game besides the trap in Deepnest that _doesn’t_ save your progress and heal you, which is telling when Elderbug, introducing the concept at the beginning of the game conflates saving your progress in-universe with comfort and relaxation.

It’s this juxtaposition of the precision, sharpness, lethal grace of the palace’s traps, and how very little of this environment feels like anywhere someone lives. How even having this grand space seemingly entirely to himself, he’s used very little of it. And then, when we actually find him, it’s clear that in a way, he _didn’t_ live here- that his robes started to deteriorate implies that whether or not he died recently, he’s certainly been neglecting himself, not leaving that chair, for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Analysis originally found here: <https://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/184202461095/honestly-though-actually-digesting-seeing>


End file.
